Branding is your business. This is one of the fundamental axioms of our consulting practice.

When any business leader wakes up and goes to work, especially the CEO, his or her job is to managing the brand. This might be a broader view of branding than you are used to hearing, but here is the logic.

First of all, a Brand is not the symbols of the brand. It is not the logo, the ads, a character or even the brand name. Those are only symbols of the brand. What is a brand then?

Your brand is a perception that exists in the minds of your constituents about your relevance and promise of value. Your Brand is the sum total of the impressions formed through exposure to your TouchPoints.

We believe that this definition of Branding is the definitive one. Those two sentences have taken years to craft and perfect, but we think this definition is the most useful view of Branding that a business can take.

Where a Brand is a noun, a thing, a perception in someone's mind, Branding is a verb, and action, in fact, it is "the" action of business. Here is our definition of Branding:

Branding is the proactive attempt to shape your constituents perceptions to some specific end through the purposeful use of TouchPoints.

Every action a business takes is designed to make your constituents, your customers, your consumers, your investors, your employees, your analyst, think a certain way so they will take some specific action (typically to buy, invest, work harder, etc.).

So everything a company does from what tissues they place in the bathroom to what components they source for the product, to how they answer the phone influences how people thing and how they act.

Ergo, Branding is your Business.

There are two important principles of effective Branding: Alignment and Direction.

The Principle of Alignment

Alignment is the concept that IF all the TouchPoints that affect the brand perception are not in alignment you will foster a murky view of the brand. If the TouchPoints can be aligned then you can achieve a much more powerful and consistent synergistic perception and in turn more effective control over their actions.

The Principle of Direction

Getting the TouchPoints in alignment is a daunting task, but in which direction should they be aligned. That is the BrandPoint, the place where you want to the customer to go. The point of the Brand. Or the perception you would like them to hold to engender the action you would like them to take. This is what some people call your vision or mission or strategy. This is what Jim Collins calls a "Hedgehog" concept in his landmark book, Good to Great.